President Obama and Republican leaders finally get in the same room.

Since the election, the script of the interaction between both sides has been so predictable it makes your teeth hurt. Whose fault is this? Both sides are showing a failure of imagination. Obama offered an exciting, challenging vision of post-partisanship as a presidential candidate, but has never quite matched those expectations. Now it's the Republicans' turn to do something mildly close to changing the way things are done in Washington. But they don't seem interested in doing anything risky. Perhaps their next set of press releases issued before a meeting in which both sides claim to be listening to the other should simply proclaim, "We look forward to accepting the president's agreement with our position."

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